Word: violencia
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...struggle. He was still in his teens, the son of a poor farming family in Colombia's northwestern Antioquia province, when he went into the mountains in 1948 as a Liberal partisan fighting against Conservative paramilitary gangs. This was the start of Colombia's decades-long fratricidal slaughter, la violencia. When it ended in the early 1960s, revolutionaries like Marulanda found the new Liberal-Conservative establishment as corrupt and oppressive as the old guard; and so he founded the FARC in 1964. That sparked a bloody civil war that has killed more than 40,000 people - including ghastly massacres...
...marijuana. Another is that Guajira is remote and inaccessible, hard to police from Bogota, with a long and irregular Caribbean shoreline that is ideal for smugglers. Still another reason is that after World War II, Colombia was prey to 15 years of civil strife, generally known simply as "La Violencia." That left 200,000 dead and a society habituated to frontier justice and pervasive corruption. There were widespread rumors that government officials winked at or even sponsored the drug traffic. That changed, however, with the election last June of Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, 62, former ambassador to Washington, as President...
Maria Eugenia is the daughter of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, 71, the controversial dictator who took office in 1953. He is credited with helping to end the fighting between Liberal and Conservative factions that had claimed 200,000 lives in the bloody violencia, and curbing the power of the elite. His regime, however, is also remembered for unbridled corruption and outrageous strong-arm tactics. Finally, the military sent him scampering into Spanish exile in 1957. Maria Eugenia went into self-exile in the U.S. and gave birth to two sons while living in Miami with her husband, Senator Samuel Moreno Diaz...
...Colombia, the largest of the working democracies remaining in South America. Little more than a decade ago, the country writhed under the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who was installed by the country's civilian and military leadership in 1953 to help bring an end to la violencia that eventually claimed 200,000 lives. Graft and jack-booted brutality characterized his regime. One memorable day in 1956, when Rojas' banner was raised in the Bogota bullring, squads of plainclothes police with knives and billy clubs closed in on spectators who failed to applaud. After a wave...
Last week's congressional elections show how painful the headache is. In an effort to end la violencia, Liberals and Conservatives* agreed in 1958 to unite in a National Front, with the presidency alternating between parties every four years, and a two-thirds majority required for all laws. Things calmed down all right; but without any real opposition to the ruling coalition, apathy ensued. With only 40% of Colombia's 7,000,000 adults going to the polls, the front last week won 102 seats in the 190-man House of Representatives...